down the corded muscles of the arm that linked them, from the heavy thickness of the shoulder to the bulge of the biceps and the cut curl of the triceps.
He removed the palm from his thigh.
And stepped away.
Qhuinn paled to the point of going gray.
In the silence, Blay didn't say a word. He couldn't - his voice was gone.
On sloppy, loose legs, he scrambled for the way out, his hand flapping around the doorknob until it gathered enough coordination to open up the exit. Walking out, he couldn't have said whether he slammed the door or shut it quietly.
He didn't make it far. Barely three feet toward his room, he collapsed back against the smooth, cool wall of the hallway.
Panting. He was panting.
And all that effort wasn't doing any good. The suffocation in his chest was getting worse, and abruptly his vision was replaced by black-and-white checkerboard squares.
Figuring he was about to pass out, he sank down onto his haunches and put his head between his knees. In the recesses of his mind, he prayed that the hall stayed empty. This was not the kind of thing he wanted to explain to anyone: outside of Qhuinn's room, hard-on obvious, body shaking like he had his own personal earthquake going on.
"Jesus Christ..."
I almost died tonight - that sets a male straight. Up there in that airplane, looking over the dark night, I didn't think I was going to make it. Everything got clear for me.
"No," Blay said out loud. "No..."
Putting his head in his hands, he tried to breathe calmly, think rationally, act reasonably. He couldn't afford to go any deeper in this -
Those heated, glossy, mismatched eyes had been the stuff of legend.
"No," he hissed.
As his voice resonated inside his own skull, he resolved to listen to himself. No further. This would go no further.
He'd long ago lost his heart to that male.
There was no reason to lose his soul, too.
An hour later, maybe two, maybe six, Qhuinn lay naked between cool sheets, staring up in the dark at a ceiling he could not see.
Was this horrible, aching pain what Blay had felt? Like, after that showdown in his parents' basement - when Qhuinn had been prepared to leave Caldwell, and made it clear that there were gonna be no ties between them anymore? Or maybe after that time they'd kissed in the clinic, and Qhuinn had refused to go any further? Or following that final collision when they had nearly come together, right before Blay's first date with Saxton?
So damn hollow.
Like this room, really: Without illumination, and essentially empty, just four walls and a ceiling. Or a bag of skin and a skeleton, as it were.
Shifting his hand up, he put it over his beating heart just to reassure himself he still had one.
Man, fate had a way of teaching you things you needed to know, even if you weren't aware the lesson was required until it had been served to you: He'd spent way too much time wrapped up in himself and his defect and his failure to his family and society. Such a tangled fucking mess he'd been for so long, and Blay, because he'd cared, had been sucked into the vortex.
But when had he ever supported his best friend? What had he ever really done for the guy?
Blay had been right to leave this room. Too little, too late, wasn't that the saying? And it wasn't like Qhuinn was offering any kind of winner. Underneath the surface, he was no more stable, really. No more at peace.
Nope, he deserved this -
The slice of light was lemon yellow, and it cut through the black field of his vision as if the blindness were cloth and the beam a sharp knife.
A figure slipped into his room silently, and shut the door.
By the scent, he knew who it was.
Qhuinn's heart began to thunder as he shot upright off the pillows. "Blay...?"
There was the softest of rustling, a robe being dropped from the shoulders of a tall male. And then, moments later, the mattress depressed as a great, vital weight got up upon it.
Qhuinn reached through the darkness with unerring accuracy, his hands finding the sides of Blay's neck sure as if they had been led by sight.
No talking. He was afraid that words would cheat him of this miracle.
Lifting his mouth, he pulled Blay down to his own, and when those velvet lips were in range, he kissed them with a desperation that was returned. All at